Finished my festivid entry last weekend, so now I have a new challenge. Trope bingo

food porn

au: apocalypse

secret child

secret twin / doppelganger

de-aged

au: space

kiss to save the day

soul bonding / soulmates

au: daemons

fake relationship

immortality / reincarnation

accidental marriage

FREE★SPACE

sharing a bed

handcuffed/bound together

cross-dressingtd>

au: cop / detective

game night

au: were / vamp / supernatural

au: historical

kidfic

au: circus

presumed dead

holiday

road trip

It's really fun. I mean, I'm currently writing an au: were/vamp/supernatural fic for The Hour, which sounds ridiculous, which on a level it is, but it's actually become a really fun exercise in world building since to pull that off, I've got to come up with a plausible explanation for why vampires and werewolves would exist in London in 1957 and what the world would be like if that happened, and what it would be like if they worked as a team on a TV news show. Anyway – I am having fun.

(FYI, I very much believe the key to good crossovers, AUs and crack is you've got to take your premise seriously and properly run with it).

In other things: Watched Call the Midwife as am in a 1950s mood, and is that not just the most perfect little drama ever? It's just magnificent and I want to hug it for being just so wonderfully humanist and not at all soapy and all about women.

Also watched Les Mis. I did not cry. Which is pretty damning really, since I cry at everything, including the trailer for The Impossible which aired right before the movie. I just didn't connect. But aside from my lack of connection, it was very well done.

Recommended because an AU version of The Hour set in the 1984 universe is just pure genius. Given the 1950s UK setting and the emphasis on truth, lies and paranoia in The Hour, I can't think of a more perfect match. It's very bleak, but then as 1984 is the setting, if it wasn't bleak, I'd be disappointed. But what's really going for it is that even though there's a considerably darker twist on the characters, Freddie, Lix and Randall are all so very heartbreakingly Freddie, Lix and Randall.

Anyway, read. Read even if you haven't watched the Hour – it's an AU and so familiarity with the characters and canon is not required.

Also: I think reading 1984 as an impressionable teenager is a major factor in my love of messy doomed romances. Hmmm. Thank goodness Twilight wasn't around then.

Feels like ages since I made post. Just been busy and cold. It's hard to type when you can barely feel your hands. Anyway, so stuff I've been watching lately.

1. Toy Story 3 – Guys, guys, if you're on the fence about seeing it, jump off and run straight towards a movie theatre. It is the best of the three and a worthy way to end what has go to be one of the greatest movie trilogies ever. It's funny and dark and heartbreaking and just...it got to me in ways I didn't think movies could any more, completely overriding that cynical voice in my brain that says 'this is a family film' and leaving me on the edge of my seat, especially in one scene which I shall not name, but if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's just brilliant.

2. The Crow Road. It's a BBC miniseries from 1996 about a young man, Prentice, charged by his Grandmother to investigate the disappearance of his uncle Rory seven years earlier (Rory's played by Peter Capaldi, if your wondering as to why I tracked this down). And it's a wonderful four hours of telly. There's a fantastic script and an all-round great cast giving brilliant performances. It's got this wonderful ethereal feeling and there's a mystery within a mystery and flashbacks within flashbacks and somehow it all flows wonderfully. And it's about faith and cynicism (I think best optimised by Prentice's father who is a hardcore atheist but who firmly believes ) and family. And I really recommend it.

Oh, and Peter Capaldi's hair is EPIC. I'm talking having gone straight past James May and started encroaching on Brian May levels of epic. It has to be seen to be believed.

3. Little Dorrit. It'd been meaning to watch this for ages because I loved the Bleak House adaptation the BBC did a few years back and figure this would be just as good. Sadly, it wasn't. It was good, it just wasn't as good, mainly because the plot was far more wandering and not as tight as Bleak House's (that may be an issue with the source material though, and not the production). And while the cast was good, no one stood out as amazing like Gillian Anderson did as Lady Deadlock in BH.

Although, it does have an incredibly high 'hey, it's X from Doctor Who' quotient, with Rory, Martha, Gwen, Midshipman Frame, Bracewell and Magpie of Magpie's electronic all showing up at some point or another, providing it's own form of entertainment.

4. Finally, for the past few months I've been watching Lewis, although I've been a bit loathe to admit this as I have spent years mocking my best friend for enjoying Midsommer Murders which is of a similar vein. Anyway, so basic plot is Inspector Morse's sidekick now has his own show and his own sidekick in the form of Mr Billie Piper, Laurence Fox, and they solve murders in the land of Oxfordshire where it is always summer, academia is the world's most dangerous profession and even murderers are pleasant people. I just love it because it feels like a throwback to the days when TV cops did have to have a dark past or a weird tick and before it became a competition to see which boundaries could be pushed the furthest. So there's no CSI-ing, no beating up suspects, no bending the law to achieve results. It's just a good, old fashioned mystery series.

Biggest crime though is how dreadfully underutilised Rebecca Front is as the resident chief superintendent. She basically shows up three time an episode and tells the boys off. I hate it when TV shows decide to put a woman in a position of power and then proceed to give her no role besides nagging boss who is more-often-than-not wrong. And I think Rebecca Front is fantastic. Use her more, show.

Finally finished my multiverse5000 fic, which has been causing me stress for the past couple of weeks. Originally posted here in the com at dreamwidth.

You know, I shall always be slightly disappointed in RDM for not managing to get Louise Fletcher in BSG somehow. With Nana Visitor and Michelle Forbes both showing up at one point or another, it would have completed the awesome Trek trio of complex Bajoran women you do not mess with complete. Anyway...

Title: SatellitePrompt: Laura Roslin and Kai Winn AdamiFandom: Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek: DS9Spoilers: All of both shows. Rating: PGWord count: ~3700Summary: Kai Winn Adami finds herself in a meeting that is anything but ordinary. Author's Notes: A huge thank you to eponymous_rose for the beta and encouragement.

As I may have mentioned, I've gotten into True Blood lately, which is to say that my girl crush on Michelle Forbes finally beat out my distaste for vampires, and I adore it. It's so wonderfully cracky, bizarre and id-satisfying.

One thing that has been bugging me though. Somewhere between Vampire Bill and Adonis-esq Viking Eric and that series three Werewolf dude that's due to show up with fantastic abs, it seems that my favourite character Sam Merlotte seems to get ignored by fandom and characters within the show alike.

So to rectify this and also to celebrate not only series three starting tomorrow but also me for the first time in ages having a crush on a guy younger than my father, and in the spirit of the show being one great big guilty pleasure, I give you:

I have been so busy lately. I'm hoping to have a weekend in which I can catch up on things and write a bit of fic, maybe do a picspam. The problem with being busy is that it leads to be tired which lead to me doing not much of anything.

Anyway, things that I've been meaning to post about all week:

1. I realised that Vincent and the Doctor is Amy's Companion tries to change history to save a life/lives, just like the Aztecs (Barbara), Father's Day (Rose) and Fires of Pompeii (Donna), except that it was a different take on it as the Doctor for once was in on it (probably knowing they'd have no success) so there was no great debate.

In a bit of drive by episode love, I have to say, as much as I love Vincent and the Aztecs (I quite like Father's Day too), Pompeii I still rate as my favourite, namely because I saw an exhibit on Pompeii earlier this year which included the plaster casts they made of people smothered by ash, and it's harrowing. Plus, Donna is utterly awesome to the point of making the naysayers finally shut up, Catherine Tate shows off why she is one of the best (if not the best) actresses to have played a Companion, and there's bonus Peter Capaldi.

But also, and leading into another thing I'm going to talk about it, my personal fanon is that it's one of the major reasons why Children of Earth happened, as in, in my fanon is that I don't think it's a coincidence that the father of the Frobisher family which did not survive CoE is the spitting image of the father of the family that survived Fires

2. I'm a bit hesitant about the new series of Torchwood that's been announced, for a number of reasons. I loved Children of Earth and was quite happy with it being a series finale, but also with the new series being set partially in America, I suspect that's lessened the chances of having Lois, Alice and Johnson join the team, or that we'll get a day in the life of Bridget Spears episode (okay, there was probably little chance of that happening ever, but it would be awesome - maybe I'll just have to write fic).

3. World Cup! World Cup! World Cup! I'm really into it this year because New Zealand's in it for the first time since the 1982. Oh, I so badly want us to score a goal.

When the All Whites are inevitably knocked out, I'm going to have to go a find some random arbitrary thing with which to use to pick a team to support. Last time I rooted for whichever team came from the country IMO had the best food. I ended up supporting Italy quite a bit.

ETA: Gah. My photobucket account which is entirely used for fandom purposes somehow knows of my facebook page, which is all about RL, or at least my photobucket account is prompting me to 'like' it. 1. How does it know who I am on facebook? 2. Make it stop! I keep my fandom stuff and my life stuff very separate so not cool, internet. Not cool at all.

I'm in such a good mood. Still on a high from the fantasticness that was Vincent and the Doctor. (Random thing: Vincent van Gogh because my favourite painter because I thought that tree in the foreground was some kind of magical castle when I was a kid. I know it's a tree now, I think of his paintings as a bit magical still. And have I mentioned, I have a Starry Night skirt. It's a skirt, with Starry Night printed on it).

Also: The Thick of It cleaned up at the Baftas. Best situation comedy, best male comedy performance for Peter Capaldi and best female comedy performance for Rebecca Front. And I'm so happy they split that category in male and female so that they could both win because Nicola and Malcolm my favourite on screen duo since Ten and Donna.

And because I like to have everything I've written on lj in some form or another:

Bright Star (Faith in Physics Remix)Author:meddowRating: GWarnings: NoneWord count: ~1900Characters: Sarah Jane, Barbara and Ian (with Harry and Luke)Summary: "There can't be that many time-travelling Smiths."Author's Notes: Thank you so much to snorkackcatcher for the beta

It's been far too long since I've really been involved with Harry Potter or thought much about it, but having one of my old HP fics remixed has brought it all back. And I get to use this icon, which I don't get to use enough.

Why should you read it? Because it's about Percy, the character I loved but many despised or worse, was at that point treated as evil by some sections of fandom. It's about his role in the Weasley family as the different one and his views on the Ministry of Magic and the Order of the Phoenix showing that his actions are not of someone who is wilfully blind, but of a person who believes in democracy, government the rule of law, or at least, not putting the future of the country in the hands of what he sees as yet another exclusive cult of personality with no democratic oversight. While the Order may not be tyrannical or to be feared, Percy's view is still a legitimate viewpoint. And because it says that in a way that is better than the original fic did.

Also, what I love about it is that the author retained the original dialogue, so it can be read along with original, the 'remix' being that the point of view has changed from Bill to Percy.

I haven't made a substantive post in ages. So here is one which I have decided shall contain good news and awesome things:

1.Heroes got cancelled! I view this as a good thing because I believe with no more canon being created it'll make it easier for me to believe that season two onwards never happened and Heroes was a one-season wonder.

2. I can't believe they cast Allison Janney on Lost. Allison freaking Janney. That is both a) awesome and b) a enormous pain in the ass because that means I may have to actually go and watch the entirety Lost even though she's only in one episode (thus is the power of Allison Janney)

4. Armando Iannucci's got funding for a new movie (a lot of funding when compared to the budget of In the Loop), one written by him and Will Smith (not that Will Smith, the other one who plays Phil in TTOI). Yay!

(And I'm going to nag you all once again to watch In the Loop because with it having being released on DVD everywhere now, there is no excuse of not having seen the movie anymore and you all should because it's one of the funniest comedies of all freaking time and it may even change the way you view politics).

5. Oh, my goodness do I love Ashes to Ashes at the moment. I do have a couple of criticisms (which are ongoing), but generally, I am so in love with this season. Nobody I know IRL watches the show (I know a few people who tried the first series but decided it was inferior to Life on Mars and stopped watching) and they tend to give me quizzical looks when I rave on about it. But this season is amazing.

But my particular love of the season comes from my new-found OT3: Ray, Shaz and Chris.

Quick vidding related PSA that I can't be arsed putting into a separate post: 1. I now have a vid master list and 2, since I finally figured out to how to fix the aspect ratio problems and because it's been bugging me for months, I've uploaded a fixed version of Kiss with a Fist. So if you want a copy in which Malcolm and Nicola don't have strangely elongated faces, you can now can have one.

So, Ashes to Ashes. It was not quite up to the standard of the preceding two episodes.